This story began about twelve years ago when I was 20 and it was inspired by two specific things. One was the year and a half old child of the girl I was seeing at the time to whom we read many picture books. The other was the copious amount of Phish shows I was seeing then. Through the latter element I developed an appreciation for the rising/plateauing and, ultimately, transcending journey that music can take and I wanted to use that as the structure of the story.
At that time, I painted over two dozen watercolor paintings, telling the story of a little boy who goes to a magical world. The story then began much as you will see now, not much has changed. The story also ends the same way. I was a decent artist then and created fantastical, if at times muddy, pictures. I submitted it to a few places with slide portfolios and was respectfully declined. Only later did I see that the pictures were weak and the story a bit incomprehensible at times. And so things that should not have been forgotten... well, they got put aside, packed away and I moved on...
But they inspired a constant back of the mind dialogue and the story would arise in my mind every so often - a new perspective here, a different color there. Then, one day, a whole poem came to mind that wanted to go along with the story. Several years later, in Hawaii, late at night after I'd finished painting for the evening, a whole new take on the story poured out of my mind and I rewrote the middle bulk of it - adding new dimension and color - and suddenly it had a STORY. The tale is full of opportunity for tangents - every element has a thousand stories that go with it and the new story was able to grab onto that narrative like some unfolding musical journey. But then, I packed things up again and it was put aside...
A year ago, Violet suggested I put some energy into a longer term project. We'd been in San Diego for two years and I'd created a lot of paintings. The feeling of needing to paint one-off sort of pieces was diminishing because there wasn't this feeling of needing to leave in six or eight months. I actually had TIME to work on something. And by now, I am a far more accomplished artist than I was twelve years ago and can actually see a vision all the way through to it's realized form. So the obvious choice, in looking at what I could possibly work on, was this story, The Gift, which, quite appropriately, went through some more editing, visioning and re-writing. What you see here was begun after we retruned from our honeymoon and represents the past two and a half months of painting work for me. Enjoy
The story will have no words. There is a little girl instead of a little boy. And the story as a whole will be way more far out than the original tale. And, this time, it will have an ending that makes sense.
michael@tenthousandvisions.com
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